History & Social Science

The history and social science department at Northfield Mount Hermon will help you really see the world.

The courses, which cover everything from the New Deal to Confucianism, Amazon warriors to macroeconomics, help you analyze historical events and individuals' roles within them. You'll look at the nature of change, both historical and cultural, and what it means for us today.

The history and social science department offers a wide variety of courses. Some of them help make the financial page make sense, many of them seemingly look backward and forward at the same time, and a few of them consider your very psyche. All of them are engaging and unique. Many of our classes integrate literary, religious, and artistic perspectives into the curriculum. This helps you find context for what we study; context that can make an irrational political act comprehensible or a foreign philosophy understandable. It can also increase your appreciation of religions and the arts, which have their own histories.

In addition to having an incredible faculty, we often bring in a wide variety of guest speakers on various topics. Sometimes we bring in visiting groups of international students to discuss ideas and share experiences. We also offer study abroad opportunities. You might travel to Turkey and discuss politics with locals in a coffee shop or go to Brazil and see firsthand the effects of both slavery and capitalization. Or maybe you'll join Model U.N. and travel and debate in Hong Kong or St. Petersburg.

As you become a better critical thinker, you'll learn to express your ideas about history and society in written form. As you write research papers, you'll discover where to find data and where to get answers. You'll become a sleuth, a theorist, and an interpreter; in other words, a historian.